As a community, we're kind of using the terms lager and ale wrong. Ale refers to a specific category of beer as brewed in England, Belgium, and some other areas. The other category (in this particular brewing culture) to compare it against is beer. If it's not an ale, it's a beer. Lines are blurred, but ale vs. lager really shouldn't be a thing.

Lager is a type of beer brewed in Germany, and it can be brewed with either a top-fermenting (what we usually call an ale yeast) or a bottom-fermenting (what we call a lager) yeast. Ale does not have to mean top-fermenting yeast, and lager does not have to mean bottom-fermenting yeast. According to the Deutsch (to whom I would defer in this matter), there are top-fermented lagers and bottom-fermented lagers. Top fermented lagers would include Koelsch and Alt, and bottom-fermented lagers would be the pilsners, marzen, etc. The important part of making a lager is the cold conditioning period, which you can do in the fridge 6 bottles at a time if you don't have the space to lager the whole batch.

So you can absolutely make a lager with a top-fermenting yeast! Just go with some of the low-ester strains as some of the folks above mentioned. Keep the temperatures down to minimize ester formation, bottle, and then throw some in the back of the fridge for cold conditioning once it's carbonated. And although some of the style gestapo might raise an eyebrow at you, I think you can rightfully call it a lager.

Well historically an ale is really a malt liquor with no or relatively small amounts of hops. So an India pale ale isn't an ale, it's a beer.

But a German-style beer that was top fermented and not lagered would have been classified as a Bitterbier. Leave it to the Germans to have a category for everything.

But honestly, I'd just call it a delicious sounding homebrew. I think us 'Muricans worry too much about fitting things into categories, and not enough about whether it just tastes good! A pilsner-based beer with noble hops and clean top-fermenting yeast sounds awesome.

Now this classification business can get very funky... I wouldn't want to go there, yet, one small piece that possibly someone has the answer to. Why is Mich. Amber bock labeled Ale in Texas... Its in small print on the box, yes, many years ago I did drink lots of it... Sneezles61

At the end of the day, I don't care what you call your beer. As long as it's awesome. My pet peeve, though, is when some brewers' association grand poombah declares your beer is flawed based on some style category that has no historic basis and therefore sucks... go ahead and make your lager with an "ale" yeast. Because at the end of the day, just because most people are wrong (based on historical context), doesn't make it right.

So make the best beer you can, and heck with what some association says. If it tastes good, then who cares! Don't let anyone else tell you otherwise.

Haha same thing plan for a beer type. And me not happy with out come. On the planned beer. But the poeple. Why drink it liked it. So on the end success. Like i did make a wit beer. Color did come out bit darker. So different name. A donkel weisen the new name

Love 1007 yeast. Currently I'm also playing with WLP810 San Fran Lager. However it does produce a bit of fruity esters in my experience. If you want the cleanest ale, 1007 is one-stop shopping. And they say the dry yeast K-97 is the same thing. I haven't tried it yet but I would love to hear others' experience with K-97.

EDIT: With respect to "ale" vs. "lager", my own definition is scientific: There are two different species, Saccharomyces cerevisia, and Sacch. pastorianus. S.c. is your normal "ale" or "beer" yeast, and tends to form a bit krausen on top of the fermenting wort, however it doesn't always do this necessarily. S.p. is your "lager" yeast that actually originated from S.c. but through human intervention, lagering in caves, and through interbreeding with other wild yeasts, it developed a way to ferment maltotriose, which S.c. cannot do, and at colder temperatures than most ale yeasts can do. The resulting beers tend to be cleaner and lower in gravity. They also tend to have the krausen form on top initially but sometimes to fall down to the bottom of the fermenting beer, however this does not always happen either.

Any differences in ester profiles, flavors, etc., I think are more due to strain-specifics, fermentation temperature, and conditioning time, than anything else. Can you use an ale yeast cold? Sure, it might work. Some ale strains like US-05 have no problem fermenting down to the low 50s like a lager yeast. Can you use a lager yeast warm? Sure, all lager yeasts will ferment just fine warm, but might give you more esters or funky flavors... but not necessarily either!

Play around, experiment. It's the best way to learn. A lot of the literature we have available out there is totally wrong. With experimentation and experience, you'll see just how true this is.

I would too. At $3.99 you buy 2 and skip the starter. Lately I've been impressed with some dry yeast. I had one dated December 2010. I thought I would see what it would do and pitched it into a starter. It took right off! I couldn't believe it!

Good point, but there was a study done a few years ago that shows a cantillon fermentation done mostly by sacch pastorianus. Doesn't make it a lager, though.

My point of view (and I certainly understand yours) is that an outside group shouldn't be categorizing a different culture's beers based on fairly arbitrary guidelines. If the Germans want to make top-fermented lager, who is the bjcp to say they're doing it wrong?